Research Interests

Narrative forms and conventions in late imperial China (1500-1900); practices of reading and writing; book culture; literature and ethics; legal writing; translation studies.

Current Research

I am working with two Washington U alums, Dr. Shen Jing of Eckerd College, St. Augustine, Florida, and Dr. Li Qiancheng of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, on separate translation projects. The first is a humorous play by Li Yu (1610-1680), Bimu yu 比目魚, and the other is a dense little novel attributed to Dong Tuo (1620-1686) but probably penned by his father, Dong Sizhang (1586-1628), Xiyou bu 西遊補. And on my own, I continue work on the early history of the novel in China, focusing on developments during the sixteenth century.